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Lot 34

 

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Riyas Komu’s disquieting portraits draw heavily from the artist’s upbringing and student-activism in Marxist Kerala. The present lot, an early version of the series of six large canvases titled Designated March of a Petro-Angel (or Desert March) which were displayed at the 52nd Venice Beinnale in 2007, features an Iranian actress as its larger than life subject.

Focusing the viewer’s attention on present day colonialism and its... Riyas Komu’s disquieting portraits draw heavily from the artist’s upbringing and student-activism in Marxist Kerala. The present lot, an early version of the series of six large canvases titled Designated March of a Petro-Angel (or Desert March) which were displayed at the 52nd Venice Beinnale in 2007, features an Iranian actress as its larger than life subject.

Focusing the viewer’s attention on present day colonialism and its victims, Komu explains that this character, “…symbolizes the Third World woman, helpless in the face of internal adversaries as well as the greater adversaries of her civilization. I chose her face because of the passions that lie hidden beneath the skin. An injury mark on her face gives a fish-eyed view of the desperate lives of women in a country hit-listed by the MNC’s-driven Pentagons. The reasons don’t end there. The face I have chosen is, of course, a mirror on the oppressors delight, physical as well as psychological” (as quoted in Think with the Senses, Feel with the Mind, LII Biennale Internazionale d'Arte di Venezia exhibition catalogue, 2007, unpaginated).

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